The “background” description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the invention. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description which may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly or impliedly admitted as prior art against the present invention.
In general, an image forming apparatus such as a printer may include consumable supplies (or consumable parts). The consumable supplies may include toner, or an image carrying member, for example.
The consumable supplies may be replaced or refilled at a given time when the consumable supplies are consumed or exhausted by an image forming operation such as printing. Such a given time may be referred as “consumable supply replacement time” or “replacement timing,” hereinafter, as required.
When the consumable supplies are almost consumed or exhausted (e.g., a condition of supply-end or near-supply-end) during a printing operation, the image forming apparatus may display that it is consumable supply replacement time on a display unit of the image forming apparatus.
However, the image forming apparatus may still continue the printing operation even if the consumable supplies are not replaced in some cases, resulting in degraded image quality because of the non-replacement of the consumable supplies.
If the image forming apparatus continues the printing operation without replacing the consumable supplies, serious damage may occur to some devices or units (e.g., engine) of the image forming apparatus.
In some image forming apparatuses, if a message indicating that it is consumable supply replacement time is displayed on a display unit during a printing operation, the image forming apparatus may immediately stop the printing operation. In this case, the printing operation may not or cannot be resumed until the consumed consumable supplies are replaced with new ones.
As mentioned above, if a printing operation is not stopped when a supply-end condition of consumable supplies occurs, image quality may degrade or serious damage may occur to some devices or units of the image forming apparatus.
If a printing operation is stopped whenever a supply-end condition of consumable supplies occurs, a user cannot continue the printing operation if the user does not have a spare of the consumed consumable supply at hand. A background art may include an image forming apparatus, which may reduce a time required for replacing consumable supplies and may facilitate a purchasing process of consumable supplies.
Such background art may facilitate a purchasing process of consumable supplies by using a network at the replacement timing of consumable supplies.
However, such background art may not have a function for selecting a stop/continue option of a printing operation when consumable supplies need to be replaced.